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U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art
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Neandertal cave art
It has been suggested that Neandertals, as well as modern humans, may have painted caves. Hoffmann et al. used uranium-thorium dating of carbonate crusts to show that cave paintings from three different sites in Spain must be older than 64,000 years. These paintings are the oldest dated cave paintings in the world. Importantly, they predate the arrival of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years, which suggests that they must be of Neandertal origin. The cave art comprises mainly red and black paintings and includes representations of various animals, linear signs, geometric shapes, hand stencils, and handprints. Thus, Neandertals possessed a much richer symbolic behavior than previously assumed.
Science , this issue p. 912
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... In addition, 73,000-yearold red diagonal line traces found on a rock fragment in Cave Blombos (Henshilwood et al. 2018); 77. 000 years old wall painting decorated with the colour obtained from seashells (Henshilwood et al. 2004), Sibudu and Border Cave and other African regions or artistic works dating back at least 40 and 45,000 years in Spain (Hoffman et al. 2018a;Pike et al. 2012) and Indonesia (Aubert et al. 2014;Brum et al. 2021) decorated with ochre are remarkable. The Altamira Cave, also in Spain, and the Lascaux Cave in south-western France are estimated to date back to 17,000 years ago, with around 600 paintings depicting scenes from nature. ...
... Red paint blown with a mouth or reed-like object on a stalagmite dome at Ardales in Málaga, a mould of a hand at Maltravieso, Cáceres, and a painting resembling the lines of a staircase at La Pasiega, Cantabria, are dated to at least 64 to 66,000 years ago (Hoffman et al. 2018a, Zilhão 2020. However, it is interesting to note that modern Homo sapiens had not yet reached the Iberian Peninsula. ...
Orman, Tarım ve Su Bilimleri
... Johnson 11 Kramer [17, p. 7]. 12 14 This is expressed in the Interest Theory versus Will Theory of rights-see discussion in Steiner [35,Sect. 3]. 15 Rajan [31,Sect. ...
... But, of course, note that many animals may be guided by humans into producing expressive creations, and, for instance, that aesthetic constructions are made by bowerbirds for specific purposes. Furthermore, there have been discoveries of cave art claimed to be made by Neanderthals (Hoffman et al.[12], which while they have been disputed[40], if they are finally verified as true it would change the perspective on the uniqueness of human capability of creative expression. ...
The question of who possesses the moral rights of creative works made using the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) is not fully resolved. In particular, the relationship between moral rights and moral agency in the production of creative works has been under-investigated in the literature. I explore these topics and argue that moral agency, intentionality and values-based reasoning are crucial for the entitlement of moral rights and hence the assignment of authorship. I conclude that, despite their great power to produce creative works, current generative AI systems cannot be the moral author of such works due to the absence of intentionality with values-based reasoning. Instead, the human end-user of a generative AI system is the moral author in most cases.
... Also, Neandertals are also known to have produced birch-tar adhesive using a carefully controlled underground distillation process , and they used birch-tar to construct composite tools (Niekus et al. 2019). Evidence of Neandertal artwork includes widespread use of ochre (Roebroeks et al. 2012), painted shells with bore holes for threading (Hoffmann et al. 2018a), carvings (Leder et al. 2021), eagle talons presumably used for adornment (Radovčić et al. 2015, Rodrίguez-Hidalgo et al. 2019, and even cave art and cave engravings (Rodríguez-Vidal et al. 2014, Hoffmann et al. 2018b, Marquet et al. 2023. Care for the wounded or elderly is more difficult to demonstrate, but numerous researchers have commented on the extensive wounds of Shanidar 1, which were unlikely to be survivable without outside assistance (Trinkaus and Zimmerman 1982). ...
... Our proposed solution, VersaGen, targets drawing as the primary control tool, given its long-standing role in human expression of the visual world (Aubert et al. 2014;Karmiloff-Smith 1990;Hoffmann et al. 2018;Gombrich and Gombrich 1995;Jongejan et al. 2017;Eitz, Hays, and Alexa 2012). Unlike previous systems that require compulsory holistic scene drawings, VersaGen admits four types of visual controls ( Fig. 1): i) single visual subject; ii) multiple visual subjects; iii) scene background; iv) any combination of the three above or merely no control at all, falling back to pure text-to-image generation. ...
Despite the rapid advancements in text-to-image (T2I) synthesis, enabling precise visual control remains a significant challenge. Existing works attempted to incorporate multi-facet controls (text and sketch), aiming to enhance the creative control over generated images. However, our pilot study reveals that the expressive power of humans far surpasses the capabilities of current methods. Users desire a more versatile approach that can accommodate their diverse creative intents, ranging from controlling individual subjects to manipulating the entire scene composition. We present VersaGen, a generative AI agent that enables versatile visual control in T2I synthesis. VersaGen admits four types of visual controls: i) single visual subject; ii) multiple visual subjects; iii) scene background; iv) any combination of the three above or merely no control at all. We train an adaptor upon a frozen T2I model to accommodate the visual information into the text-dominated diffusion process. We introduce three optimization strategies during the inference phase of VersaGen to improve generation results and enhance user experience. Comprehensive experiments on COCO and Sketchy validate the effectiveness and flexibility of VersaGen, as evidenced by both qualitative and quantitative results.
... Sketching is also a natural and primitive means of communication; it is how our ancestors transmitted ideas, stories, and activities. Indeed, all we know about our history is due to the drawings humans engraved in caves or on rocks and pottery [3]. Sketch understanding is also profoundly connected to cognition development [4]; it is the means through which an infant starts to understand the world and enables people to understand complex structures and unfold complex processes. ...
Sketch-based Image Retrieval (SBIR) is a prevalent task in computer vision, where a model should produce a bimodal sketch-photo feature space. Training such a model requires sketch-photo pairs to adjust a bimodal neural network. However, accessing paired data is impractical in real scenarios, such as in the case of eCommerce search engines. To address this problem, we can leverage self-supervised learning strategies to learn the sketch-photo space, which has yet to be explored. Therefore, this work presents a study of the performance of diverse self-supervised methodologies adapted to the SBIR domain. The term self-supervised means the model cannot access sketch-photo pairs, relaxing the training to see only pseudo-sketches generated during training. So far, our study is the first to explore diverse self-supervised mechanisms for SBIR (S3BIR). Our results show the outstanding performance of contrastive-based models like SimCLR and CLIP adapted to SBIR under a self-supervised regimen. S3BIR-CLIP is the best model in terms of effectiveness, achieving a mAP of 54.03% in Flickr15K, 45.38% in eCommerce, and 13.80% in QD. In the eCommerce dataset, we increase performance by around 20% w.r.t. previously published results. However, regarding resource consumption, S3BIR-SimCLR is the most competitive.
... Numerous ground-breaking archaeological findings over the last couple of decades challenge past conceptions about the origins of cultural practices that define our species, such as art-making, time-and account-keeping, communication, reasoning, and ritual (Brumm et al., 2021;Henshilwood et al., 2018;Hoffmann et al., 2018;Overmann, 2016). Among these are records of early practices of mark-making. ...
Engraved ochres and ostrich eggshells from the South African Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter are among the earliest expressions of human symbolic behaviour. They appear to document a continuous practice of non-figurative mark-making across ~40.000 years. During this time, the engraved markings change from simpler unstructured patterns to more complex, ordered and symmetric markings such as cross-hatchings. To inform discussions of the possible function of the engravings, we conducted a two-part experimental study. Based on the assumption that artifact use will motivate incremental adaptive refinements, we used a transmission chain experiment to reconstruct the cultural evolutionary trajectory of the engraved marking. Each transmission chain was seeded with drawings derived from the early Blombos and Diepkloof engravings. We then conducted five experiments to assess the cognitive implications of the changes to the drawings and compared these results to a similar analysis of the original engravings. The drawings became increasingly easier to discriminate and increased in their perceived intentionality over the experimental generations. There was no evidence of a systematic change in drawing saliency or memorability, and the drawings did not acquire stylistic properties over the experimental generations. Although we observe interesting qualitative similarities between the original engravings and the transmission chain drawings, our findings suggest that cognitive biases and working memory constraints are not sufficient to generate the patterns observed in the archaeological record, highlight the significance of social and functional contexts in shaping early symbolic artifacts. By integrating archaeological and experimental research we can better inform inferences on sparse records of early symbolic behaviour. Our study thus leads to a broader consideration of the role, strengths and potential limitations of the transmission chain approach in analysing trajectories of early symbolic behaviour.
... 4 Non-Earthlike planets and non-Sunlike stars may also support complex life (Battistuzzi et al., 2023;Heller & Armstrong, 2014;Schulze-Makuchen et al., 2020). Language, art, technology, and symbolic thought are not unique to Homo sapiens (Dediu & Levinson, 2018;Hoffman et al., 2018;Leder et al., 2021;Çep et al., 2021); they began deep in our hominin past (Mithen, 2024;Ferentinos et al., 2024). Interactions among cultures rather than unique cultural traits seem essential to the birth of technological civilization (Pacey & Bray, 2021). ...
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization (ETC) is active on Earth today, is taboo in academia, but the assumptions behind this taboo are faulty. Advances in biology have rendered the notion that complex life is rare in our Galaxy improbable. The objection that no ETC would come to Earth to hide from us does not consider all possible alien motives or means. For an advanced ETC, the convergent instrumental goals of all rational agents – self-preservation and the acquisition of resources – would support the objectives of removing existential threats and gathering strategic and non-strategic information. It could advance these objectives by proactively gathering information about and from inhabited planets, concealing itself while doing so, and terminating potential rivals before they become imminently dangerous. Other hypotheses of ETC behavior, including the zoo/interdict hypothesis and the dark forest hypothesis also undercut the claim that the ETH is highly improbable, and the ETH overturns none of our well-tested scientific knowledge. It follows that evidence offered in its support need not be extraordinary. The fact that most reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) have natural or human explanations does not count against the ETH. Inference to the best explanation offers a way to find evidence for the hypothesis and some evidence exists, some of it taking the form of reliable witness reports. The most plausible alternative explanation for some UAP declines in probability over time. A hypothesis that does not contradict well-established facts or theories, is not highly improbable for other reasons, and explains otherwise unexplained evidence is a rational hypothesis. Since the ETH meets this test, it should be evaluated alongside other possibilities when the case-specific evidence warrants it.
Once we have recalled the surprising results obtained from the constructions of the Bruniquel cave, an Early Middle Palaeolithic (EMP) age, therefore of Neanderthal origin (MIS 6), we summarise from a heritage, archaeological and methodological point of view our multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary interventions on this specific site, now protected as a historic monument. The constrained access to the site, the taphonomical parameters and the originality of the building material used (calcite) all complicate the methodological advances of the archaeological research that is still in progress.
Une fois rappelés les résultats étonnants accordant aux constructions de la grotte de Bruniquel (Tarn-et-Garonne) un âge Paléolithique moyen ancien, donc néandertalien (MIS 6), nous résumons d’un point de vue patrimonial, archéologique ou méthodologique nos interventions pluri- ou interdisciplinaires sur ce site désormais classé au titre des monuments historiques. La contrainte d’accès au site, les paramètres taphonomiques et l’originalité du matériau de construction sollicité (la calcite) ajoutent à la complexité méthodologique de l’opération d’étude qui est toujours en cours.
El presente libro, titulado «Innovación e intervención en el aula: propuestas educativas para diferentes áreas y niveles educativos», tiene como propósito ofrecer un conjunto de experiencias y propuestas pedagógicas que invitan a reflexionar sobre la práctica educativa actual y a explorar enfoques novedosos en diversas áreas del conocimiento. Estas propuestas, desarrolladas por docentes e investigadores comprometidos con el cambio, buscan aportar nuevas perspectivas que enriquezcan el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje, adaptándolo a las necesidades y realidades de los estudiantes de hoy, abordando una amplia gama de temas que van desde la historia, las ciencias, la tecnología, la literatura, hasta la educación emocional y la salud, entre otros. La diversidad de áreas refleja la complejidad del ámbito educativo contemporáneo y la necesidad de fomentar una enseñanza que no solo se centre en la transmisión de contenidos, sino también en el desarrollo de competencias críticas, creativas y emocionales. Cada una de las propuestas presentadas en este libro está diseñada para involucrar activamente al alumnado en su propio aprendizaje, fomentando su curiosidad y motivación, y, en última instancia, contribuyendo a la formación de ciudadanos críticos, comprometidos y responsables.
Cueva de los Aviones (southeast Spain) is a site of the Neandertal-associated Middle Paleolithic of Europe. It hasvyielded ochred and perforated marine shells, red and yellow colorants, and shell containers that feature residuesvof complex pigmentatious mixtures. Similar finds from the Middle Stone Age of South Africa have beenvwidely accepted as archaeological proxies for symbolic behavior. U-series dating of the flowstone capping the Cueva de los Aviones deposit shows that the symbolic finds made therein are 115,000 to 120,000 years old and predate the earliest known comparable evidence associated with modern humans by 20,000 to 40,000 years. Given our findings, it is possible that the roots of symbolic material culture may be found among the common ancestor of Neandertals and modern humans, more than half-a-million years ago.
The emergence of symbolic culture, classically identified with the European cave paintings of the Ice Age, is now seen, in the light of recent groundbreaking discoveries, as a complex nonlinear process taking root in a remote past and in different regions of the planet. In this book the archaeologists responsible for some of these new discoveries, flanked by ethologists interested in primate cognition and cultural transmission, evolutionary psychologists modelling the emergence of metarepresentations, as well as biologists, philosophers, neuro-scientists and an astronomer combine their research findings. Their results call into question our very conception of human nature and animal behaviour, and they create epistemological bridges between disciplines that build the foundations for a novel vision of our lineage's cultural trajectory and the processes that have led to the emergence of human societies as we know them.
The evidence of modern and complex behavior is a key debate in human evolution. Neanderthals have been excluded from this debate from many years, until new insight have provided a new conception of the Neanderthal behavior. Nevertheless, although archaeological data of complex and modern behavior has been inferred, this is not a generalized scenario in Middle Paleolithic sites. In the present paper, we point taphonomical issues as the responsible for this misconservation of cognitive markers. Furthermore, we highlight the action of ursids as one of the agents that has most modified the archaeological record. Nevertheless, bears not just erase behavioral evidences, their action may also generate material realities that can be misinterpreted by archaeologist as Neanderthal behavioral markers. In the present paper we analyze issues related to organized use of space and symbolic behavior such as inhumation practices and graphical expression. We approach this issue from a multidisciplinary research based mainly in actualistic, experimental, paleontological and ethological observations.
We describe eight, mostly complete white-tailed eagle (Haliaëtus [Haliaeetus] albicilla) talons from the Krapina Neandertal site in present-day Croatia, dating to approximately 130 kyrs ago. Four talons bear multiple, edge-smoothed cut marks; eight show polishing facets and/or abrasion. Three of the largest talons have small notches at roughly the same place along the plantar surface, interrupting the proximal margin of the talon blade. These features suggest they were part of a jewelry assemblage, --- the manipulations a consequence of mounting the talons in a necklace or bracelet. An associated phalanx articulates with one of the talons and has numerous cut marks, some of which are smoothed. These white-tailed eagle bones, discovered more than 100 years ago, all derive from a single level at Krapina and represent more talons than found in the entire European Mousterian period. Presence of eight talons indicates that the Krapina Neandertals acquired and curated eagle talons for some kind of symbolic purpose. Some have argued that Neandertals lacked symbolic ability or copied this behavior from modern humans. These remains clearly show that the Krapina Neandertals made jewelry well before the appearance of modern humans in Europe, extending ornament production and symbolic activity early into the European Mousterian.
A worked stone from a secure Mousterian context has a bone splinter driven through it and appears to modern eyes like an attempt to represent a face. The authors argue that a face was indeed intended, and that the Roche-Cotard "proto-figurine" can be counted among the earliest art objects. At this place and date it should refer to a Neanderthal people.
U-series dating is a precise and accurate geochronological tool which is widely applied to date secondary CaCO3 formation, for example in speleothem based palaeoclimate research. It can also be employed to provide chronological constraints for archaeological sites which have a stratigraphic relationship with speleothem formations. We present in detail our methods to conduct precise and accurate U-Th dating of calcite crusts that formed on top of cave paintings. Our protocols allow the application of U-series measurements on small, thin calcite crusts covering cave art, which can be found in many sites, while taking care not to harm the art underneath. The method provides minimum ages for the covered art and, where possible, also maximum ages by dating the flowstone layer the art is painted on. We present dating results for crusts from two locality types in Spain, a typical cave environment (La Pasiega) and a more open, rock shelter type cave (Fuente del Trucho).
Very little is known about Neanderthal cultures(1), particularly early ones. Other than lithic implements and exceptional bone tools(2), very few artefacts have been preserved. While those that do remain include red and black pigments(3) and burial sites(4), these indications of modernity are extremely sparse and few have been precisely dated, thus greatly limiting our knowledge of these predecessors of modern humans(5). Here we report the dating of annular constructions made of broken stalagmites found deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwest France. The regular geometry of the stalagmite circles, the arrangement of broken stalagmites and several traces of fire demonstrate the anthropogenic origin of these constructions. Uranium-series dating of stalagmite regrowths on the structures and on burnt bone, combined with the dating of stalagmite tips in the structures, give a reliable and replicated age of 176.5 thousand years (+/-2.1 thousand years), making these edifices among the oldest known well-dated constructions made by humans. Their presence at 336 metres from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity.
The chronology of European Upper Palaeolithic cave art is poorly known. Three chronometric techniques are commonly applicable: AMS 14C, TL and U-Th, and in recent years the efficacy of each has been the subject of considerable debate. We review here the use of the U-Th technique to date the formation of calcites that can be shown to have stratigraphic relationships to cave art. We focus particularly on two recent critiques of the method. By using specific examples from our own work using this method in Spain, we demonstrate how these critiques are highly flawed and hence misleading, and we argue that the U-Th dating of calcites is currently the most reliable of available chronometric techniques for dating cave art.